nor do they really have the power to do jack didlysquat about it if they DID care. Really.

. . . well, to be fair, the same contingent of "geniuses" took us to war in Iraq based on a "1% chance" that Saddam Hussein had WMD. . .

Economists didn't give us good "costs and benefits" to changing taxation policies with the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, and deregulation of the economy. We got vague platitudes about things like 17% annual growth, and creation of 4 million jobs per quarter (which was later, quietly revised down to something like 100,000).

These policy changes never achieved anything near that, and, in fact, collapsed the fucking economy.

And yet, nobody holds "Austrian" Economists to this same high standard of proof for their whack-a-doodle theories. And when it comes to the idea that investing in sound management of industrial emissions and natural resources - we hear the same claims from these fortune-tellers, that doing so will "ruin the economy". IMNSHO - that's evidence that we should do exactly the opposite of what the Economists say.

If you have insurance you pay the medical expenses for smokers, alcoholics or drug users . . . who are presumably WORKING, and on an employer-provided plan.

It's the NON-WORKING drug-users that I have a problem with. Gee, I wish I had the luxury to sit around all day, play video games, smoke crack, and have someone else work their ass off to pay for it.

. . . well, the first practical applications of industrial manufacturing, and computers, have been war and genocide. I don't expect THAT to change.

. . . . standing in VERY long lines. . .

exactly.

I'm upset that I'm in my 40's and can't have what my parents had - (including a secure retirement) - despite their lack of college education. Yes, this IS a fucking depression, and despite a localized, brief illusion of recovery, things are, long-term, on the down trend. We will likely have a pretty nice spring and summer (jobs and energy-price wise) - but the drought is continuing, and harvest will be bad, food prices will continue to climb (globally), and the EU financial situation is continuing to spiral downwards. Confidence in our financial institutions is not improving. It's likely that after around October, we're going to see some more signs of another downward change in direction in the global economy, which will continue to put the brakes on the US economy, no matter how much more austerity we continue to apply.

I don't expect this much class from Ellison. I really don't.

I may be paraphrasing Nathan Explosion here, but we're all facing mortality. Most of us are just in denial about it - most of the time.

That's not actually true. He was "saving" us from a world dominated by overpriced IBM time-sharing systems, and Sun, SGI, workstations. The world of the vertically-integrated systems.

There was no such thing as "personal computers" - and commodity hardware didn't really exist until the IBM PC and Apple I came on the market. As Microsoft was an independent software company, Bill Gates' "vision" was that by de-coupling the software from the hardware, he was providing a solution to the high-priced systems that the vertically-integrated competitors were selling.

At least, that was the idea in the late 1980's, early 1990's. And it was really the truth. Your typical IBM PC, plus MS DOS, plus productivity software, was a crapload cheaper than all competitors. When competitors DID emerge, the productivity software didn't exist. And that's where the problem occurred, because that's where MS became a monopoly. The only thing that kept prices competitive was the competition in the hardware space, and the bundling deals.

It's very different, in the post-2005-ish market, now that there are viable Linux solutions out there. Microsoft is hurting because of this. Most of their former competitors - if you hadn't noticed, are gone.

Gonna just squirt on down to Cabo on my Yune.

. . . who could have imagined that?

condoms

Where we really need cameras are inside the nation's trading floors, boardrooms, and executive offices. /Libor

. . . or citizens will be glad to provide their footage to 4chan, in which case, Anonymous will take it from there.